Today is the first day of a two-day symposium being organized by Indonesia’s National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) called “Dissecting the Tragedy of 1965, the Historical Approach”. The symposium is examining the mass killings that took place here from 1965-1966 under the pretext of an anti-communist purge through testimony given by experts, survivors of the atrocities and members of the military.
The government has shut down or prevented numerous open discussions about the mass killings in the past, but this symposium has been given the blessing of the government, as evidenced by the fact that Indonesian Coordinating Security Minister Luhut B. Pandjaitan delivered the event’s opening remarks this morning.
However, judging from the tone and content of Luhut’s remarks, it seems unlikely that the government is in fact ready to work towards the kind of truth and reconciliation process that survivors and human rights activists have been pushing for in order to bring light to this dark chapter in Indonesian history.
First of all, Luhut made clear in his remarks that while the government wanted to make peace with history, this did not mean it was going to apologize for the mass killings. According to CNN Indonesia, he said, “We are not stupid. We know what we are doing, and what is best for this country. As security minister I am risking my credibility to make sure this symposium is conducted transparently.”
The most widely accepted estimates by historians are that between 500,000 to one million people were murdered as part of the mass killings, with some estimates as high as two to three million. However, Luhut disputed even the low end of that estimate.
“I was tickled that the number of victims was touted as 500,000 people or even more. There were not that many victims,” Luhut said as quoted by Tempo.
Retired Army Lieutenant General Sintong Pandjaitan (no familial relation to Luhut), who helped lead a Kopassus special forces platoon during the time of the killings, also disputed the large casualty estimates commonly accepted by historians. “If the number of victims is said to be in the hundreds of thousands, it’s a fraud,” Sintong said as quoted by CNN Indonesia.
In fact, he said there was only a single person killed by Kopassus forces in Central Java during the anti-communist purge. “Those lies [about the number killed] tarnish the dignity of our special forces.”
We hope that this symposium does gives equal time and weight to the testimony of the people victimized by the horrors of the mass killings, because otherwise we’re not sure how much this symposium will be able to accomplish.
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